Part of chess is art, where IQ doesn't look at art. I'm also a high IQ person - but the creative side of chess is my down-fall. Perhaps it's not so much about having a high IQ as a ballanced science/art brain - and heaps of training.

Yeah, I think post #85 of this thread is kinda like that part in Fast Times where Phoebe Cates doffs her top (rented videotapes would actually get worn out from all the stopping and rewinding over that area).

Part of chess is art, where IQ doesn't look at art. I'm also a high IQ person - but the creative side of chess is my down-fall. Perhaps it's not so much about having a high IQ as a ballanced science/art brain - and heaps of training.

Thats like saying chaos and order can both be viewed as art, but only order can be part of a controlled system to achieve a goal(outside of creating chaos) and you have only mastered one facet.

That is an interesting assertion. I found a professor on here who seemd to have to be relatively intelligent and have decent spatial reasoning skills to teach philosophy. On the other hand that is subject in and of itself.He wasn't rated so well, around 1000 and had been at it for a while.

For an interesting spin on the discussion, I don't give much creedence to IQ testing. They are subjective. Of course some right answers are obvious, but others are a matter of interpretation and therefore subject to someone's opinion. Aside from that, how are you supposed to truly isolate raw intelligence, versus what we have learned, that is required to express it in the first place?

Hence a 50 year old man would always generally appear to have more raw intelligence than a 5 year old, though it may not be true. I have taken multiple IQ tests, one of which said I was 186. If so it would stand to reason I would be a better chess player, however, I think patience, interest level and memorization ability go along way to actually determining how good you are at chess. You can be really intelligent, but if you have deficiencies in those area, you can really hinder you, not just in chess.

It's hard to compare. Here we often use a 4/5 year training program. With a bit of exercise, that is sufficient to get an intermediate club player. (Think 1500-1600 rating or so.) I think people who complete the program can reach this level. After that it's anyone's guess. I peaked around 1950 with my own work. I know guys of around 2200 or so, but then they put a fair amount of work in it. That means you must play all the time, solve tactics and study patterns.

Most of the players I know are fairly well educated/fairly intelligent. Yet there are ones that never did that program. Maybe they only play. They usually don't get any better than ''intermediate.'' They're quite happy with that btw, playing people of their own level.

How about natural aptitude? I've absolutely no aptitude for music but I liked maths...my sister is musically gifted (at least much more so than me) but was/is a dunce at maths. I've known players with a natural gift for chess who play well (i.e., 1400~1500) with very little study or experience (no me Lol).

Robert Oppenheimer (director of the Manhattan Project) played chess from an early age, was enthusiastic about it, purportedly had a 160+ IQ, and totally sucked at chess, played like a 1400 level game. There is a game you can google from a tourny at Princeton in which he played Einsein and you can see how he totally stunk up the board.

- The simple fact that you can study for an IQ test devalues it as a measurement of natural intelligence

- Bobby Fischer did not have an IQ of 180

- Garry Kasparov does not have an IQ of 190

- Chess skill is not an indication of intelligence, it is an indication of chess skill. It is fun to think being good at chess makes you smart, and have others think so as well, but there's no truth to this.

- Hard work and going down the right path with a trainer/coach will get you much further than any sort of natural intelligence will. Alekhine taught us this in his match vs Capablanca, and Laszlo Polgar taught us this by raising 3 daughters to be world class chess players.

There's no direct correlation - as a commenter on the 1st page said, there are probably more intelligent than unintelligent players. But while I've know some very brilliant people who were strong players, I've also known a few strong players who, having had a conversation with them, I was surprised they even played.

Lol! Well said! I have met both sorts as well :D Reminds me of Nimzowitsch's outburst: "Why must I lose to this idiot?" (Which is not to say that his opponent was actually an idiot).

I have often wondered about the correlation between chess playing ability and IQ myself. It is easy to associate a healthy ego with a large score in either of the categories; I believe we often read too much (or completely misread) into numerical quantificiations of non mathematical phenomena. A talented chess player does not necessarily have to have even above average intelligence to perform well at this game, just as a Honors degree in Physics is no guarantee of Chess aptitude.

Intelligence is an funny thing. There met people whose elevators don't quite make it to the top floor who are still capable of profound understanding of natural things that baffle even the wisest of men. There are geniuses of great reknown who forget to put their pants on when they leave the house.

In short, I quit worrying about my IQ, rating, and all that jazz, and I put more effort into enjoying the game for its worth. :)